Programming breakbeats.

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[lodger]

one trick is to get the general tempo matched to your bpm, bounce that down to a new sample and then chop. a good way to treat a break cut into smaller chunks is to layer it behind a break you programmed to add some extra depth or complexity to the loop.

[yo-yo crunch]

try chopping two hits together (snare+hat or kick+snare) so you get the reverb or room sound in between. pete rock technique

[EarlGrey]

try chopping two hits together (snare+hat or kick+snare) so you get the reverb or room sound in between. pete rock technique

church

[Unfolding]

Oi Commercial, do you mean how to chop a break & have it sound 'right' or to use a bunch of one-shots to sequence your own new breaks?

If you're using a breakbeat from a record, get it to loop evenly first. Then chop it down to quarter lengths notes. So a 2 bar loop goes across 8 pads. When sequencing either use mute groups or have the samples play in gate mode so you can have one pad stop as the next pad starts. This'll make things sound much smoother.

If you want to make your chopped breaks a little more complex, chop to 8th notes. That way a 2 bar loop becomes 16 chops. Like this you'll start getting lots of separated hihats so you can do much more interesting break chopping. It's basically how the pitched up drums in this were done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eaqxo1R7raA

Gotta be honest it's way easier to do this if you're chopping with waveforms or numeric values. Programs like Recycle great at doing this, most DAWs should have their own method for visually chopping waves as well. I'd hate to do an 8th note breakbeat chop on an SP without a screen, but it's still entirely possible to do.

If you're using one shots & can read drum tabs, here's something I just chucked together as an example of composing a simple 1 bar break in 16th notes:
x - - - | - - - - | - - - - | - - x - | <- open hihat
- - x x | - - x - | - - x - | - - - - | <- closed hihat
- - - x | - - - - | - - - - | - - - - | <- ghost snare/roll snare
- - - - | x - - - | - - - - | x - - - | <- snare
- - - - | - - - x | - - - - | - x - - | <- kick 2
x - - - | - - - - | x - x - | - - - - | <- kick 1

Composing breaks is all about the little & less obvious things a drummer would do:
- Use ghost notes
- use 2 similar sounding kicks
- accent certain notes (like each quarter note) to push the rhythm harder.

Be careful if you're using a bunch of one shots that they're from similar sounding sources or from the same pack. A dank sounding snare matched to super crisp hi-fi hats will often sound 'wrong' no matter what. If you wanna use random one shots, try filtering/resampling them through the same effects before sequencing.

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[Unfolding]

Ah, cool, so what's the Hatrixx method? Curious to read that now, had a lazy google & couldn't find it...

Yeah using gate mode can be great if you get stuck into your 505's micrscope editor... For some awesome mutes try chopping to quarters & setting the micro's gate length to 48 (an 8 note long). Sounds sick when you play the 1st beat of the bar with an 8th note mute before the snare & have all the following samples play in full.

Also, this is something I've kinda kept to myself but I'm sure others do it as well: sequence your break (use mute groups etc to get it sounding nice) then speed up the tempo by a couple of BPM. Gives you some mad natural swing. Don't apply swing to the sequencer channel, let the samples & tempo do the work.

Forgot to say when using breaks, try to keep everything quantized tight. Sure it's not cool to rep quantize but it sounds so much nicer with breaks... Which is why Pete Rock never made a sloppy beat.

Good luck!

[lodger]

in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with using quantize...its like an artist using a straightedge to make a straight line. there's a time to do freehand, but if you're doing something technical, you are going to need to be precise. Be skilled at everything and don't use quantize or nonquantize as a crutch

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[hseiken]

That shit's the same dub-turbo junk that's been floating around for ages. It's just a different name...again (what is this, the 3rd or 4th time they changed the name?)

Apparently if your software sucks, you change the name and marketing and suddenly it'll not suck. What kind of stupid thought process is that...

[LO-]

i protect my reputation by industry standard using wave files
when i knock out the bangin beats